Another world
I followed Danny into the past, those memories made shadowlands by time. We sat on a bench at the edge of the wooded expanse and he pointed to the star-studded sky much as Ivo had done a year before. We watched one star fall and he laughed and said it was his soul up there. I wasn't entirely convinced he was joking.
Then the stars begin to fall in great number, one after the other, so that the sky itself was a tremendous meteor shower - a great explosion and fizzling of lights that illuminated the world around us, culminating in a grand finale of silent fireworks that made me shiver with excitement and fear. And when the last star fell, even though it was but one and should not have mattered so very much, all around us went black. I couldn't even see Danny's face in the void. Nervous, I opened my mouth to speak but he silenced me. And so we sat there, staring at nothing, saying nothing. We waited a full hour - or so it seemed, time passes so slowly in nothingness - and then I felt the weight of his arm around my shoulders.
"Come," he said softly and without warning we dropped down into the dark.
I found that I was sitting in my own living room and just across from me my mother and father were playing a board game. I gasped but the sound must have been inaudible as nobody looked up. But how very different they were! There was a bright energy around them I had never seen before, a lightness of spirit that was catching. Even the house seemed newer for their presence, though it was already a century old. The wallpaper was tightly in place, not sagging or hanging down in sheets as gravity reclaimed it. The furniture was elegant in its old-fashioned upholstery, polished perfection in antique symmetry. The same pictures I knew so well growing up were there on the walls, but oddly inoffensive; they were heirlooms, histories of my family. I found myself admiring the handsome faces, curious and not the least bit resentful.
I surveyed my parents with great interest. They were very much in love with one another, just as they would be in the decades to come, just as they would be after my arrival. But for some reason it made me smile, seeing them this way, it made me happy. I had never known them young. My mother was nearly forty-seven when I was born, my father ten years her senior. As a child, I had assumed that all parents were old. I couldn't imagine having a young playful parent. I was fascinated to view them healthy and lively, optimistic, out-going. They were perfect for one another, an enviable couple. They looked like they belonged out to dinner with friends, in a nightclub or at the theatre. Such a pretty pair, they belonged in the public eye. But I wasn't bothered that they were content staying in. It suited them. They were perfectly situated.
I felt Danny's hand on my back and I pushed away in protest. I didn't want to leave. I felt comfortable in my own home, wanting to be with my parents, for the first time in so very long. The past is like another world, another chance. I felt that if I stayed there in that moment, it might all turn out alright, I might be alright. But he took my hand and accepted no resistance.
His prisoner, I followed him back into the blackness.